Money and Power Embrace Patient Engagement
Money and power are embracing the patient engagement movement because of the bottom-line connection to better outcomes in chronic disease and higher payments to providers meeting new government benchmarks.
Should Your Review of Your Doctor Be Taken Seriously?
By Kent Bottles, MD Recent articles highlight challenges with holding providers accountable for the care they deliver. One of the major thrusts of efforts to transform the American healthcare delivery system has been to become more patient-centered and to allow patients to provide feedback that matters. Emblematic of this is the emphasis on patient involvement […]
Can Downton Abbey “Health Plan” Replace Obamacare?
In modern terms, Downton Abbey seems to offer long-time employees comprehensive and generous health and disability coverage. But how does it compare to Obamacare?
The Man Who Brought Computers Into Medicine
When Homer Warner first started using computers in a hospital, the computers were analog and the house call was state-of-the-art. Warner, who died recently at age 90, did more than anyone else to translate research into innovations that continue to hav…
Left Behind: Will Cutting Medicare Hurt Seniors?
Forget finances and the fiscal cliff: raising the Medicare eligibility age from 65 to 67 is likely to kill some of those left behind – even if they already have private insurance. And cutting provider reimbursement too deeply? Ditto. Most of the criticism of a proposed two-year age hike has focused […]
Left Behind: Will Cutting Medicare Hurt Seniors?
Forget finances and the fiscal cliff: raising the Medicare eligibility age from 65 to 67 is likely to kill some of those left behind – even if they already have private insurance. And cutting provider reimbursement too deeply? Ditto. Most of the criticism of a proposed two-year age hike has focused […]
Patient Politics: the PCORI Puzzle
By Michael L. Millenson The new Patient-Centered Outcomes Research Institute (PCORI) has been asking different stakeholders about the most important issues to address with the hundreds of millions of dollars the quasi-governmental group will shortly be doling out in grants. Not surprisingly, the stakeholders have been more than happy to respond. PCORI’s most recent day […]
Why Obamacare Is Good for White People
By Michael L. Millenson With some pundits predicting that President Obama’s re-election could be sabotaged by a slim level of white voter support, I decided to dig through the small print on Obamacare to see how this right-wing lightning rod actually affects my fellow Caucasians. It turns out that the high-profile legislative highlight of Obama’s […]
The Nefarious Big Bird- Health Care Connection
By Michael Millenson The flap greeting Mitt Romney’s cheerful admission that as president he’d defund Big Bird’s nesting place on public television could turn out to be good news for a federal agency promoting safe medical care that faces a similar extinction threat. But we won’t know till after the election whether the little-known agency […]
Can Big Bird Save Patient Safety Agency?
The flap greeting Mitt Romney’s cheerful admission that as president he’d defund Big Bird’s nesting place on public television could turn out to be good news for a federal agency promoting safe medical care that faces a similar extinction threat. But we won’t know till after the election whether the […]